Video: Correcting tone with blending modes and masking

Here in this movie, we are going to explore how we can work with adjustment layers, blending modes and masking in order to improve exposure. With this portrait here, you notice that this area is a little bit too dark. I want to brighten that up. I also want to brighten up the overall picture. So let's go ahead and zoom in on the photograph and then let's make a few adjustments to it. We are going to do this again with adjustment layers and blending modes. Here click on the Curves Adjustment Layer icon that will create a new Curves adjustment.

In this course, photographer, author, and teacher Chris Orwig details the tools every photographer needs to retouch portraits to make them look their best while remaining authentic. The course includes an overview of the retouching process and how to develop a plan for a retouching project.

After exploring techniques to improve the overall photo, Chris shares his techniques for reducing wrinkles, enhancing eyes and other facial features, improving hair, and retouching makeup. The course concludes with a look at retouching skin and reshaping portions of a portrait using transformations, the Warp tool, and the Liquify filter.

Correcting tone with blending modes and masking

Here in this movie, we are going to explore how we can work with adjustmentlayers, blending modes and masking in order to improve exposure.With this portrait here, you notice that this area is a little bit too dark.I want to brighten that up.I also want to brighten up the overall picture.So let's go ahead and zoom in on the photograph and then let's make afew adjustments to it.We are going to do this again with adjustment layers and blending modes.Here click on the Curves Adjustment Layer icon that will create a new Curves adjustment.

Now we actually aren't going to make any adjustments to the Curves itself,rather we are just using this, so that we can then apply a brightening blending mode.The blending mode that we are going to use is Screen.You can think of this blending mode as if you were projecting from two differentprojectors the same image onto one screen.It's like we have a double the intensity of the overall brightness.Well, I don't want that to be applied to the entire image everywhere in the samerate, so if you click on your mask, it will take you to the Masks tab here and wewill click Invert; that will then hide or conceal all of this blending.

So there is nothing happening with this layer now.We are going to then mask in how we want this to affect our photograph.I also want to create another one of these layers, so while I'm here I willpress Command+J on a Mac or Ctrl+J on Windows.All right, so far what we've done is we've created an adjustment layer, change theblending mode to Screen and then fill that mask with black.Next, let's go to the underlying layer -- this one here.Then let's select our Brush tool.You can select the Brush tool by pressing the B key.

For your brush, you are going to want a relatively big brush so we want to havea decent sized brush without any hardness and then we want to decrease ouropacity, probably to right around 50% or maybe a little bit less.Next you are going to go ahead and select white in the color picker here, and weare just going to start paint in some of this area.In doing this, we are going to try to paint this in a somewhat smooth way,and then we will smooth out our brush strokes even further by working in the Masks panel.Now when you get to the edges, you may want to decrease your opacity a littlebit more so you can create a little bit of a transition, so it doesn't look somuch like raccoon eyes. And so here I am just painting back and forth over thisphotograph and I am looking to kind of paint in some brightness into a fewareas of the picture that I think will help it out; that will give it alittle bit of a boost.

Here if we click on this icon, you can see our before and now our after.All right, well that's okay;except the problem is that my brush strokes are just too harsh.It's too noticeable.So double-click on your mask to open up the Properties panel and to target themasks and here we are going to increase the feather.In increasing the feather, it's going to soften all of those edges, and you wantto do that so it can just kind of takes away the intensity of those brushstrokes that you made.All right, well now if we click on that icon, you can see the before and then now the after.

Well currently, this is just brightening the face.Well, if I also wanted to brighten the rest of the image, you can decrease the density.By decreasing the density, it's changing the black mask to something which is a less than black.Now it's a little but gray.In doing that, well this adjustment layer, it's brightening the face and it'salso brightening some other parts of the image.It's adding a little bit of life to the photograph.Okay, well this adjustment is looking pretty good.Next thing I want to do is, go into my other adjustment layer here, which has ablack mask, and here once again, I am going to use my Brush tool. I am going topaint with white. We will use a nice low opacity. Let's take this up just alittle bit though from where it was, and then I will decrease my brush size bypressing the left bracket key. I am just going to bring a little bit of lightinto the eyes as well.

So I am using this other adjustment layer just to kind of fine-tune a little bithow this is coming in here, and I am just going to try to bring in just a touchof light into this area and also into some of these shadow areas as well.So by doing this, I can kind of stack up this brightening effect.Next, we will go to the mask and we will add some feather.And when you add this feather, it really softens this out, so it makes theseadjustments a little bit more just kind of in this general area thanspecific brush strokes.It's an easy way to create a lightening or brightening effect that isn't really that noticeable.

Well, here you can see that before and after on this layer and then if weclick and drag across the Eye icons, we can see our overall before and afterand in this way, we've looked at how we can use an adjustment layer and theblending mode in order to brighten different parts of our photograph andwhat's interesting about using this technique is that we have flexibility aswe saw in regards to working with the mask, whether we are changing thedensity of the mask.We also can then soften our edges of our brush strokes and ultimately becausethis is an adjustment layer, it's not increasing our file size that much.

Last but not least, it's almost always interesting to experiment with youropacity levels with these layers, and here I am just going to bring these back a little bit.I find a lot when I'm working with my people photographs, I apply an effect andit's just a bit too strong.Yet, it helps me kind of see my edges if you apply it at a strength which is abit more than you need. Then at the end of the workflow you can back that off sothat you have nice results as we have here with this photograph.

There are currently no FAQs about Photoshop for Photographers: Portrait Retouching.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

Already a member ?

Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
Learn more

Upgrade to our Annual Premium Membership today and get even more value from your lynda.com subscription:

“In a way, I feel like you are rooting for me. Like you are really invested in my experience, and want me to get as much out of these courses as possible this is the best place to start on your journey to learning new material.”— Nadine H.

Thanks for signing up.

We’ll send you a confirmation email shortly.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses with emails from lynda.com.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.